Ecclesiastes - Apathy

I think Ecclesiastes is one of the most encouraging books of the Bible for someone plagued with apathy. I think it is meant to enlighten us to our subtle and totally futile attempt to infuse meaning or purpose into our lives, instead of just accepting the ample amounts of meaning AND purpose God supplies.

My theory about apathy revolves around Ecc 3:11b, which says "He[God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."

There is clearly an innate conflict here! People cannot find meaning away from God because there is something eternal in us, It is at our core, we seek fulfillment, we don't already have it. We are infinite beings in a finite world, we need eternal fulfillment only God can provide.

Apathy comes form searching the finite for fulfillment, there's only pleasure. Pleasure can appear fulfilling and make us wonder why we are not fulfilled.

This is how the book ends:

Ecc 12:13 Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
Ecc 12:14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

Comments

  1. Rene'January 27, 2009 at 12:28 PM

    I agree, if humans could really grasp "The fear of the Lord" think of the wisdom we could have, because thats where it begins!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gainless love

I've been thinking of the stark contrast between God's love and ours. It's true to say God's love is endless, but what does that mean? Well when i was a little boy i was sneaky and got away with all kinds of stuff and in one instance i reveled in doing something because it was evil. I stepped on my friend's hand and i did not let go until he cried. I did this in defiance of being good, i did it to be evil. For some reason i remember this super clearly, and since felt SUPER bad of my intentions. Well according to the old law, i should at least suffer for that particular betrayal. Sadly, i've dwarfed that offence with hundreds of hideous double-minded hypocrisies. If it weren't for Paul claiming his supremacy among sinners, i would be able to level a pretty good argument for my own. Jesus's blood nullifies my offences before the Father, like, all of them, even the future ones! The father does not hold my sin against me. I will never experience the wrath fo
Read more

Security of faith

I love science, it really jives well with my OCD, and who doesn't have a touch of OCD these days? Pure science is a logical process applied to something for the purpose of uncovering an unbiased truism. The truth can then be tested in every conceivable way and become well defined. Then you really got something! Science, in its innocence, is a beautiful thing and is to be aspired to. Unfortunately people can be better at the logical process than others, and so ensues the bitter sweet power struggle. Which brings all the fun of politics careening into the pursuit of truth. When people start lying about stuff and you get a bunch of people to agree to lie too, you have the monstrosity of popular science. Charismatic scientist can leverage their findings against ideas they deem offensive. Science and logic, like everything else, can be twisted into weapons to oppress. I thought too highly of science coming out of high school. I had my faith, which i could defend logically fair decently.
Read more

Motivation for studying theology

You know when you meet someone new and you totally jive with them. You want to ask them a million questions because you just met your new close friend. You can't wait to spend time getting to know them and could easily spend hours talking with them. You end up with quite a large collection of facts about them, but more importantly, you feel like you kinda know who they are to some degree. Over the course of getting to know them maybe your initial assumptions were proved wrong and you're all the happier for it. You find yourself trying to adapt their best qualities into your life thereby enriching yourself through them. I submit that studying theology could be, even should be like that. The pursuit of theology has a very different feel than sitting with your new friend, but why? I think the motivation behind it is key. If you like a person and simply want to know more about them, you have a natural hunger for knowledge, but also, experience. You want to experience things with th
Read more